“Everything That We Can Do”: A Content Analysis of the Protective Strategies Used by GLBTQ Parents

Despite increased access to parenting rights through legal marriage and adoption, U.S. gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ) parents continue to experience varying levels of support for their families. This study explored protective strategies, or actions taken to meet one's safety needs when vulnerable, that GLBTQ parents pursue. This study included 454 GLBTQ parents from a national survey. Participants' open-ended responses about protective strategies were extracted from the survey and analyzed using content analysis. Responses were coded into 10 categories capturing strategies GLBTQ parents used to protect their families. While strategies utilizing legal supports were common, the most cited strategies were symbolic strategies, including creating a family name and developing written statements of parent wishes. Exploratory analyses revealed no difference in mean number of strategies used between parents who reported having legal status as a parent through adoption or listing on the birth certificate and those without legal parenting status. These results suggest that GLBTQ parents, regardless of their legal parenting status, take intentional measures to achieve a sense of safety and increase social support. The findings reiterate the importance of both legal and social support of GLBTQ parents.     

Defending the Family,Defending the Faith: An Analysis of The Family: A Proclamation to the World,Religious Identity,and the Politics of Same-Sex Marriage in a Mormon Community

In this article, we apply Peter Berger's theory of religion as a social construct to learn how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon Church) advances a heteronormative view of family relationships in the United States using a document titled The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Furthermore, applying cultural studies theory, we examine how believing Mormons negotiate the tension that arises when their secular values compete with those expressed by Church leaders. We argue that, although the Proclamation addresses a number of issues, the Church offers a closed text that emphasizes war narratives in which same-sex marriage is portrayed as a threat to LDS identity and the heteronormative family. This closed text is further legitimized by emphasis on the authority of Church leaders as oracles of God. The study participants largely accept the dominant narrative, and those who reject it, do so with some trepidation.     

后现代语境下网络造句现象的解读与反思

后现代语境下的网络造句既是一种文化现象,也是一种社会现象。它采用复制拼贴、移植杂揉、反讽戏谑等手法,把“娱乐至死”精神发挥到极致,刻画出了一幅全民参与的狂欢图景。并非所有的网络造句现象都是无实质意义的娱乐化产物,有相当部分的网络造句现象来源于现实社会问题,只不过表达形式采取了娱乐式的戏谑手法。然而过度娱乐化,却会造成文化消费主义、虚无主义、非理性主义、个人主义伴随着网络造句现象不断蔓延。为此,需要对后现代语境下网络造句现象的消极影响进行理性反思,有针对性地加以消解,从而保障虚拟社会得以秩序化运行。     

移动舆论场:高校宣传思想工作的新场域

作为意识形态领域的新兴角力场,移动舆论场在改变高校师生生活方式和价值取向的同时,也对新时期高校宣传思想工作提出了新的挑战.要占领意识形态高地,高校必须科学认识移动舆论场的内涵,积极研究和判断形势,利用好移动舆论场的情境创设、具象传播、动态调节、隐性型塑、社交渗透等方面优势,通过思维转变、话语转型和载体融合,切实增强高校宣传思想工作的有效性.     

Does media coverage influence public attitudes towards welfare recipients? The impact of the 2011 English riots

Following the shooting of Mark Duggan by police on 4 August 2011, there were riots in many large cities in the UK. As the rioting was widely perceived to be perpetrated by the urban poor, links were quickly made with Britain's welfare policies. In this paper, we examine whether the riots, and the subsequent media coverage, influenced attitudes toward welfare recipients. Using the British Social Attitudes survey, we use multivariate difference‐in‐differences regression models to compare attitudes toward welfare recipients among those interviewed before (pre‐intervention: i.e. prior to 6 August) and after (post‐intervention: 10 August–10 September) the riots occurred (N = 3,311). We use variation in exposure to the media coverage to test theories of media persuasion in the context of attitudes toward welfare recipients. Before the riots, there were no significant differences between newspaper readers and non‐readers in their attitudes towards welfare recipients. However, after the riots, attitudes diverged. Newspaper readers became more likely than non‐readers to believe that those on welfare did not really deserve help, that the unemployed could find a job if they wanted to and that those on the dole were being dishonest in claiming benefits. Although the divergence was clearest between right‐leaning newspaper and non‐newspaper readers, we do not a find statistically significant difference between right‐ and left‐leaning newspapers. These results suggest that media coverage of the riots influenced attitudes towards welfare recipients; specifically, newspaper coverage of the riots increased the likelihood that readers of the print media expressed negative attitudes towards welfare recipients when compared with the rest of the population.     

Subjective well‐being in the new China: religion,social capital,and social status

We present the first nationally representative evidence on the relationship between religion and subjective well‐being for the case of China. Research on Western societies tends to find a positive association between being religious and level of well‐being. China provides an interesting critical case as the religious population is growing rapidly and the religious and socioeconomic environments are profoundly different from Western societies, implying different mechanisms might be at work. We hypothesize to find a positive association between religion and well‐being in China too, but argue social capital, for which strong evidence is often found in Western societies, is unlikely to be an important mechanism because religion in China is generally non‐congregational. Instead, we argue that the private and subjective dimension of religion matters for well‐being in China by helping adherents have an improved sense of social status relative to the non‐religious in the context of rapid social change and growing inequality. Our results generally support these predictions.     

The disorganized family: institutions,practices and normativity

This paper considers the value of a normative account of the relationship between agents and institutions for contemporary efforts to explain ever more complex and disorganized forms of social life. The character of social institutions, as they relate to practices, agents and norms, is explored through an engagement with the common claim that family life has been de‐institutionalized. The paper argues that a normative rather than empirical definition of institutions avoids a false distinction between institutions and practices. Drawing on ideas of social freedom and creative action from critical theory, the changes in family life are explained not as an effect of de‐institutionalization, but as a shift from an organized to a disorganized institutional type. This is understood as a response to changes in the wider normative structure, as a norm of individual freedom has undermined the legitimacy of the organized patriarchal nuclear family, with gender ascribed roles and associated duties. Contemporary motherhood is drawn on to illustrate the value of analysing the dynamic interactions between institutions, roles and practices for capturing both the complexity and the patterned quality of social experience.     

中华传统美德的个体性展示

中华民族传统美德是中华民族的优秀遗产,需要中华民族一代一代人不断传扬下去。在这个过程中,社会全方位的美德倡导播撒,是个体展示的最佳环境和前提,同时又是个体展示的机遇。但社会展示只是一个形式和要求,社会展示要通过一个个个体展示落到实处,个体性展示才是具体可视和可操作性的,是社会展示的承载,没有这个承载,社会弘扬与展示只是一个空壳,无根无基。由此,强化个体性展示,对个体性展示提出更高更具体要求,是中华民族传统美德弘扬与践行的根本所在。     

新常态视角下高校社会服务功能拓展研究

高校社会服务功能拓展是经济"新常态"背景下的应有之义和必然选择。强化高校社会服务的职能观,以社会需求为导向培养应用型人才,面向社会领域主动开展科学研究,构建高校科学研究转化机制,建立高校社会服务的激励与评价机制,是高校社会服务主动适应和服务"新常态"的重要举措。     

社会主义敬业精神的传统､本质和中国特色

劳动强度、劳动时间、劳动创造性是构成劳动的三个基本维度.但传统敬业精神往往以劳动强度和劳动时间作为主要评价标准,体现为“热爱、勤勉、克制”等工作作风.随着知识经济时代的到来,社会主义敬业精神也由传统的以道德定位向现代的价值定位方向转变,劳动的创造性或者创新性工作日益成为评价劳动者敬业精神的重要尺度,与此相对应,“创新”成为社会主义敬业精神的本质.中国特色的敬业精神是社会主义敬业精神民族化和时代化的反映,它以创新为核心,是“实干作风、奉献思想、追求卓越”三者高度的统一.